Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The moral treatment of the insane : a lecture / by W.A.F. Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
6/32 (page 6)
![insaue are now surrounded, but the reasons upon which these are provided, the objects in view; and that they are not, necessarily, general ai'rangements for all cases, but special adaptations for par- ticular conditions and stages, which the skilful superintendent grants, withholds, modifies, as he sees expedient. Museums, for instance, are collected and scientifically arranged. They are fitted for the educated, the curious, to supply materials for thought; but it would be greater madness than what you profess to cure, to pre- scribe them for the maniac, the erotic, the general paralytic! Botanic gardens have been formed and classified; but no one would commit them to the care of the common gardener, or to the plough of the agriculturist. But the maniac may be exercised, and his energies toned down by cricket, or curling, or even in following a pack of hounds; the erotic, as well as the refined and nature-loving, may find health and subsidence of morbid appetite in the fresh air, and among the flowers in special gardens ; of which, it is encouraging to notice, fifty have been recently allotted to the pauper lunatics in Colney Hatch. The general paralytic, again, may obtaui the enjoy- ment which he cannot otherwise reach, and that euthanasia which it is almost humanity to cherish, in carriage drives, smnging, or even in sailing. There is a fallacy even in conceiving that Moral Treatment con- sists in being kind and humane to the insane. It is this^ and a great deal more than all this. To place a melancholic in an hospital, to watch and ward, to feed and physic him, and to see that he is gently and forbearingly used, and to do nothing more, is to neglect him, and miserably to mistake the mission which you have under- taken. You may pour in iron to supply rich and stimulating blood, phosphorus to repair the waste of nervous tissue, stimulants to call forth agreeable sensations, and cannabis indica to embody these sensations into happy and hilarious visions; but unless you send through the eyes and ears multitudes of pleasing impressions,— unless you unceasingly dispel doubt and despair by words of wisdom and consolation,—unless you create a vicarious pain or a vicarious interest,—unless you make a sense of duty react upon selfish sorrow, —unless you call forth some dormant or neglected habit or taste, or initiate a pursuit or a study by imitation or compulsion,—you do much, but you do less than what you are competent to do, and than what is required. The cumulative growth of that which we caU a system of ]\Ioral Treatment has been slow and gradual. Every advance Avas tuuid and tentative. There are vestiges of the Conservative or iron age still around us, and are, perhaps, shackling our judgment and humanity. I cannot forget that so exclusive and mysterious were these abodes, that the first time I entered, or could enter, an asylum in this country, was to take possession as a superhitcndenl; that on](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21940113_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
